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Re:Successful room temperature ambient-pressure magnetic lev... by pr0zac on Friday August 04, 2023 @11:33AM (#37001430)
The conversation is about "black swan but good" events and white is often used as short hand for good as opposed to black being used as short hand for something bad. Its pretty easy to understand what he means (even if "white swan" is technically used usually to refer to major events that were predictable beforehand) so I'm guessing you're just being mean for no reason.

I am wondering though what exactly you think "black swan event" means since your post here makes it rather clear you don't at all understand what the term means or where it comes from either.

Black swans are not at all rare and a "black swan event" is not called that because of the rarity of black swans. Its called that because "black swan" was at one time used to refer to non-existent or impossible things in England then when Australia was discovered they found out black swans are actually extremely common, which was a very unexpected event that couldn't have been predicted from the data available beforehand. Its the discovery of black swans that was unlikely, not black swans, and its the unexpectedness of their discovery happening that is the relevant piece that makes something a "black swan event". [1]

If black swans were rare seeing one would not be a "black swan event" (ironically it would be a white swan event) because it would be possible to predict that one would could be seen, just not very often, making it not have the required unexpectedness.

Please if you are going to be pedantic try to also actually be correct on what you're being a jerk about first.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory

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